Wednesday, April 16, 2008

My vet is a dirty filthy liar

I was a little upset with how things went down the other day at the vet. I mean, I brought my dog in to have his bladder drained and I ended up taking a zombie home that couldn't contain his bladder or walk. He had played fetch earlier that morning, and used my leather couches as a vault so he could catch the tennis balls Evan was throwing him. He wasn't hurt in any way.

Until those cockshiners got hold of him. And charged me over $400 to fix their fuck up. And they were trying to get me to spend another $4500 to get him back surgery.

So, yesterday, sick of seeing my dog drool all over himself and bite me when I tried to force these horse pills down his throat, which he either immediately threw up or spit out, we decided to take him off the pills. We felt that they were making him worse and thought that until we had a second opinion, we should hold off.

My second opinion came in the form of Anna Detrick, and awesome vet over at Maple Leaf Veterinary Care Center, and I felt comfortable with her and her staff from the get-go. They were very friendly and interested in Charlie. And they seemed genuine. Something I hadn't felt from the previous vet. Dr. D was very thorough with Charlie, going over all his limbs slowly and carefully, then going over every inch of his spine not once, but twice. She showed me where the supposed spinal issue was, and showed me how she could push down pretty hard, and got no response from Charlie. She said that if he truly had a spinal defect, he would yelp or at the very least, cringe away. He just continued to lick his paw. She also looked in his ears, played with his paws, and listened to his heart. He showed no signs of any trauma and felt confident in telling me I could take him off his medications and cancel the neurosurgeon appointment.

When I asked her what could have happened to send him into such a tailspin, she said she couldn't really say as she wasn't there, but that they could have either pinched a nerve in his back while restraining him for the urine draw, or when they were pulling the needle out of his bladder, his squirming could have made them nick the lining of his bladder or other internal parts (not enough to cause bleeding, but hard enough to cause him to go into shock). Either way, he doesn't have spinal problems.

She is going to go over the x-rays today and get back to me if something out of the ordinary shows up, but she said sometimes those can be deceiving, especially if they aren't laying perfectly still or straight.

So I am so much more relaxed. I was so stressed the last few nights trying to figure out how to pay for back surgery on my dog.

As a treat for Charlie, he had London broil roast beef, and I made S'mores brownies.

Thank you for all your kind words, by the way. You guys are pretty awesome.

That reminds me of my experience at the vet, where they tried to use high pressure sales tactics to get me to get my cat an ultrasound and surgery for what turned out to be 24-hour KITTY FLU. Thank goodness I got a second opinion.

Have you heard of zootoo.com? It's a pretty good resource for pet owners. If you take a minute to sign up, you could write a bad review of that first vet. Maybe save someone else the heartache. It sucks that some of them are obviously out there just to make money.

Ohh that is SO great to hear. Second opinions are priceless if you ask me. Why does it always seem that the first place you go to screws you over so that you HAVE to get a second opinion? How does happen? I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me.

Anyway, glad to hear Charlie should be okay. I want some smores now, thanks Christie. ;p